


The Holy or the Broken (Hallelujah)

by sarahcakes613



Series: The Cohen Files [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Jewish Holidays, Jewish Identity, Jewish Natasha Romanov, Jewish Steve Rogers, Jewish Tony Stark, aggressively Jewish headcanons, basically everybody is Jewish, except Thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 06:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20131141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahcakes613/pseuds/sarahcakes613
Summary: A series of vignettes that explore each Avenger's connection to their own Jewish story.(In which the author has a LOT of feels about this subject and you can pry these Jewish headcanons away from her cold dead hands.)





	1. The Holy or the Broken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amy/gifts).

> Recommended musical accompaniment:
> 
> (Rock the) Belz – SoCalled  
Yankele – Theodore Bikel  
Rozhinkes mit Mandlen – Tzimmes  
Hallelujah (Yiddish cover) – Daniel Kahn  
Hallelujah (English cover) – kd lang  
Return Again (Shlomo Carlebach cover) – Shaina Noll  
Hinei Matov – I recommend the versions by Harry Belafonte or Adam Sandler

Steve 

און איך זע דײַן שלאָס, איך זע דײַן פֿאָן/ אַ האַרץ איז נישט קיין מלכס טראָן

_Yeah I've seen your flag on the marble arch/love is not some kind of victory march_

Sarah Rogers, née Teitelbaum, only takes her son home to meet her parents once. He is three years old, and she wants him to have a traditional _upsherin_. Her father agrees, but when his daughter tells him the boy’s Hebrew name is Menashe, his hands tremble so hard he is unable to hold the scissors. Her mother does it instead, while her father cries and tears at his shirtsleeve until it rips.

She takes Menashe home and smears honey over a copy of _Forverts_. When he finishes, there is newsprint on his nose but he can now recite his _alef-beis_, and she hopes that in this new world, that might be enough.

Menashe brings Yankele home when they are 8 years old. Rather, more accurately, Yankele has half-carried Menashe home, because Menashe has a sprained ankle and a bloody nose. They trip over each other to tell Sarah the story but it boils down to nothing new under the sun. She’d escaped Ukraine and its pogroms, but the Cossacks had followed behind and now they are in Brooklyn starting fights with her beautiful boy. His ankle heals, the blood washes off his face, and Menashe and Yankele make a pact to only use their English names from hereon out.

Steve and Bucky are inseparable, right up until the war comes between them. Steve says _kaddish_ for his mother and prays that he never has to say _kaddish_ for Bucky. It’s almost a relief that he doesn’t have the chance to before he is bringing the Valkyrie down in icy waters. As he drifts off to sleep, he murmurs the _sh’ma_ to himself.

When Steve wakes up, it’s a new world, but certain things haven’t changed. There are still Jews in Brooklyn, many of them looking like the one photograph his mother had kept of his grandparents. He smiles at them the first time he goes wandering around the old neighbourhood, stops when he realises they are not smiling back.

He is thrilled to learn that _Forverts_ is still publishing. He has them delivered to his apartment in Washington when he sets up with SHIELD. He writes to their headquarters and asks if they have archives he can look through. They direct him to the Yiddish Book Centre in Massachusetts. He drives his bike down one morning, gets there just after lunch. He spends the afternoon learning how to use their digital archives. Word spreads that Captain America is there – that Captain America _speaks Yiddish fluently_ – and a small crowd gathers. He graciously poses for photos and signs a handful of post-it notes on his way out. The woman in charge of visitor services has the same name as his mother, and when she nervously asks if he prefers Captain or Mr. Rogers, he asks her to please, call him Menashe.

After the Triskelion falls, he doesn’t know what to do. He runs into Amy Altman, the SHIELD chaplain, at a Whole Foods. She invites him to a memorial service that she is co-leading with two other rabbis from the DC area. They’ve booked the hall at Sixth & I and even at family and friends only, it’s filled to capacity. Steve stands at the back, Sam by his side. An older man named Toby hands them both booklets with transliterated prayers. Steve smiles, holds up his own somewhat battered from travel copy of _Siddur Sim Shalom_. At the end of the service, Toby introduces them to his wife and twins. They stand around attempting to make light conversation over canapés, but when Steve bites into a _mandelbrot_, all he tastes is metal and river water. Bucky – his Yankele – is out there, and all Steve wants is to bring him home.

Tony

_Your faith was strong but you needed proof_

He’s not Jewish, he’s just Jew-ish. It’s a line said with a flashy smile and a wink and sometimes the smile is a smirk and hip thrust as he explains he’s half Jewish and would she like to guess which half.

Howard Stark’s legacy is a box of metal scraps, a worn-out prayer shawl, a name change at Ellis Island. It is a self-hatred so deep that it is buried under a half-century of hiding in plain sight. Nothing but the best would do for his only son, and the best was private country clubs, the kind whose quota was always mysteriously filled just as he applied for membership.

Tony receives no Hebrew name, there is no _pidyon haben_. His entire knowledge of his heritage as a child is the hateful slurs his father throws at him when he’s had too much to drink, when he’s so drunk that looking at Tony is like looking into a fractured mirror and all he can see is the features he hates so much in himself.

When his parents die, Tony arranges for a mass to be held in his mother’s honour, starts a charitable foundation in her name. He does nothing for his father.

Tony’s the safe Jew, everyone knows they can throw their worst joke at him and he’ll just hit them back with one of his own. He smiles blankly when they tell him the one about the ashtray, the one about the pennies. They are as meaningless to him as the self-effacing humour he sees in Mel Brooks films, none of it speaking to him because to understand Jewish humour you have to understand Jewish life and he doesn’t.

It’s not until Afghanistan, until New York, until Sokovia. Until he has no more bottles to peer through, that he walks into the synagogue his father left a week after his own bar mitzvah.

And then walks right back out. It is too close, too crowded, too full of men speaking a language he doesn’t understand, praying to an entity he doesn’t believe in. He goes home, locks himself in his lab, communes with creatures of his own design in the language that makes the most sense to him. He debates learning how to knit, and then knitting a little prayer shawl for DUM-E, then wonders if that would be considered sacrilegious. He goes online to find out and is distracted by the myriad of Jewish-themed outfits for dogs that exist. 

He finds his fathers _tallis_ at the bottom of a box, folded carefully, a rectangle of yellowed wool. He unfolds it carefully, and a tangle of frayed strings drop down from the corners. Pepper finds him standing there an hour later, staring down at the pool of fabric in his arms. When they are having dinner that night, she casually reminds him that they have S.I. business in Washington coming up, and has she ever told Tony about her old college roommate, who went to rabbinical school and now works at SHIELD? He knows what she’s doing, and he’ll never tell her how much he loves her for it.

Rabbi Altman agrees to meet with Tony in a coffee shop near Capitol Hill. He tells her all the reasons he’d be a terrible Jew, and then she counters with all the reasons that his reasons are actually proof of just the opposite. They debate for two hours, and at the end he is surprised to find that there is no clear winner. Rabbi Altman laughs and tells him to get used to it. When they part ways, she calls him _Uriel_. 

When he gets home, he wraps himself in his father’s shawl. He doesn’t know any prayers, so he has a one-sided argument with G-d and figures that’s kind of the same thing.

Natasha

_I know this room, I've walked this floor_

Born in the shadow of war and rebellion, her parents breathe a sigh of relief when she emerges pink and female. There will be no involuntary conscription into the army like her brothers before her. Then they are gone and in the place of her parents is the Red Room and when she turns 12 she kills for the first time and it’s like a bat mitzvah only instead of taking her place in the world as an adult, she takes her place as a Widow.

There is an intake form when she agrees to join up with SHIELD. She is as honest as she can be, it’s a new thing she’s trying out, but there are some pieces of herself that she cannot share. She puts down 1984 for her year of birth, because it’s the last book she read, and she leaves a blank space next to religion, because the only thing she’s learned to believe in is the power of persuasion, of pain, of secrets. There is no dogma to match the belief that everyone has a price.

She’s on a soft mission, a protection detail in Montreal. He’s a scientist with big ideas and a taste for matzo ball soup. He makes her drive to four different delis before he finds one that he deems worthy of consumption. He buys enough for them both, and the first sip of broth, bright yellow with chicken fat, explodes in her mouth like a wall coming down between her past and her further past.

It starts to come back to her in pieces, scraps that she clings to as proof that she existed before she was made. She understands an old man who asks her for directions and only realises afterwards that he’d asked – and she’d responded – in Yiddish. Clint asks her how she knows it and she can only shrug.

One autumn she overhears two SHIELD agents discussing the upcoming holiday, and without asking she somehow knows they are talking about Rosh Hashanah. The name rises up in her and she doesn’t know what it means, but it tastes like dense _lekach_ and _rozhinkes_. She doesn’t know what rozhinkes are until she describes them to Clint and his eyes do that sad-dog twitch as he asks why she’s describing raisins like she’s never had them. She has, of course she has, but the raisins in her oatmeal this morning don’t taste like the rozhinkes in her memory.

SHIELD has chaplains of every faith on call for their agents. She hovers in the doorway of Rabbi Altman’s (“please, call me Amy”) office. She gives Natasha a stack of books, memoirs of shtetl life, the history of Soviet Jewry. She traces the names of towns that no longer exist, vanished along with their inhabitants. They mean nothing to her.

Amy invites her to a Sukkot gathering at her home in Maryland. Halfway through dinner, it starts to rain and suddenly Natasha is 4 years old again, running behind her mama and tatteh as they rush to carry everything inside before the _s’chach_ collapses in on them.

Natasha thinks of every action as an entry in an accountant’s logbook. Odessa, 1964, negative 3. Mumbai, 2002, positive 14. Every life she’s taken, every life she’s saved. Amy has a poster on the wall of her office, it’s a quote from the Talmud.

** _Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world._ **

Maybe someday she’ll have saved enough worlds to cancel out the ones she’s destroyed.

The year she turns <strike>ninety</strike> thirty-four, she has her bat mitzvah. She doesn’t invite anyone she knows, but Clint and Phil show up anyhow. It’s an afternoon service with _havdalah_. She holds the candle up high, letting the wax drip onto her fingers. Through the shimmer of flame, she thinks she sees a man and a woman. The man has her stature, the woman has her chin.

Clint 

_But all I've ever learned from love is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you _

Edith and Harold Barton don’t leave any lasting memories of faith with their youngest son. There’s the occasional Christmas tree, sometimes day-late Easter chocolate, but they don’t come with stories of why, there’s no midnight mass to explain the reason for the season.

It’s not until the circus, flickering lights in the window of Malka the fortune-teller’s trailer drawing him in, that he finds something that he thinks maybe, just maybe, he can believe in. It’s a cold Friday night in Iowa in late November, and Clint’s gone through another growth spurt too fast for Barney’s hand-me-downs. He’s jogging around the camp to keep warm when he sees them. Two candles, flickering yellow-orange. He watches them, trying to absorb their warmth through the glass, his face so close that it fogs under his breath.

He jumps when the door to the trailer creaks open, but Malka just invites him inside. She is just about to sit down to supper, and he sits there quietly while she hums and then sings words he doesn’t understand. When she finishes, there is _hamin_, rich and savoury, spiced with things he’s never heard of, and a loaf of bread that’s like nothing he’s ever tasted. It’s thick and fluffy and tastes faintly of licorice, but in a warm toast kind of way. Malka is nice, which means she doesn’t last long in the circus. He doesn’t remember what she looks like, but he has never forgotten the way that bread tasted on his tongue.

Years into his time at SHIELD, Phil gets a look at his file and forces him to take a week of mandatory vacation. He’s not even allowed on the base to use the gym, so it’s desperation that first leads him to the community centre near his off-base apartment. The facilities coordinator shows him around, gives him a magazine with all the classes and services the centre offers. He skims it as she talks, and one catches his eye. It’s a six-week course on baking Jewish breads and pastries and as he looks around a bit more carefully, he realises that this is not one of the city-run community centres like he’d assumed. The coordinator doesn’t blink an eye when he tells her he’s not Jewish, tells him membership at the centre is not contingent on membership in the community.

He makes friends in the class, takes a few more, and without meaning to, he does wind up feeling like a member of the community. He’s woven himself into the fabric of traditions he holds no genetic claim to, and it feels more right than anything he grew up with.

When he knocks on the door of the SHIELD chaplain’s office, he’s expecting an old man with a beard who will take one look at him and deem him unworthy of admittance to the tribe. Instead he gets a woman roughly his age who smiles, offers him a cup of tea. She listens to his halting explanation of why he wants to do this, and gives him some books to read. The rabbi suggests an evening class taught at a local synagogue she’s affiliated with, and one year later she is presenting him with a certificate that names him _Yonatan ben Avraham v’Sarah_ and Nat and Phil and Thor are there, and he feels a warmth spreading through his body, settling in his bones, as if his entire being is finally saying yes, I’m home now. He has made enough bread for everyone, and his happiness tastes like caraway seeds.

Bruce

_I did my best, it wasn't much/I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch_

Bruce’s life divides neatly into three time periods. His Wikipedia page titles them “Early Life”, “Physics”, and “Post-Gamma Bomb”. His early life is fairly average, aside from the abusive alcoholic father – then again, considering his teammates, that part also qualifies as fairly average. Brian Banner is a distant parent at the best of times, and most of Bruce’s happiest early memories are summers at the B’nai Brith camp, where he would spent weeks at a time pretending he had no father.

Bruce’s ethnoreligious heritage is as much a part of him as anything else, but much like the colour of his eyes or the set of his jaw, it’s not something he thinks about. After his mother dies, he stops going to summer camp. His aunt encourages him to focus on what interests him, and so he switches out the after-school program at the JCC for an advanced science program at the local community college. For his bar mitzvah, there is a perfunctory service at the Reform temple, and when he starts university, he passes the Hillel office every day on his way to his lab, but never stops in to introduce himself.

He is invited once to debate on a panel of scientists facing off against a creationist who has been making waves online. He doesn’t offer much beyond a quote that would probably hold more weight if the creationist were not an Evangelical Christian, but he likes it anyhow. _Scientific study is not forbidden, for such study is like a ladder on which to ascend to the wisdom of Torah._

After the Gamma Incident, the irony of the quote’s origins is not lost on him. Rabbi Judah Loew is now best known to history as the alleged creator of the Golem, a creature who Bruce only sort of remembers from campfire stories before his own transformation. He sees footage of the Other Guy and his first thought is how much he resembles the figure he’d always pictured when listening to those stories. He finds a copy of Singer’s novel in a used bookstore and one passage stands out to him.

_“The Rabbi thought he saw an expression of perplexity in the golem's eyes. It seemed to the Rabbi that his eyes were asking, 'Who am I? Why am I here? What is the secret of my being? Rabbi Leib often saw the same bewilderment in the eyes of newborn children and even in the eyes of animals.” _

That’s what Hulk is, he is a wild animal, and Bruce is his reluctant gamekeeper. They reach an uneasy peace over the years, he avoids stressful situations and tamps down on the fuse of his anger any time it comes close to being lit, until he has no choice but to let it catch fire.

When Stark offers him a lab of his own, a near-unlimited budget for the project of his choosing, he assumes there is a catch. The catch is that it means working with the Avengers, letting them work with the Other Guy. He is reluctant to give that much power to the destructive Golem inside him, but the alternative is going back into hiding and he is not ready to climb back into that attic.

He still avoids stressful situations when he can, hiding in his lab when Tony has his dinner parties. Pepper drags him out of his lab one night in September. It’s a small gathering, his teammates and a scant handful of others. Dr. Foster is there, and a woman he doesn’t recognise but everyone else seems to know. She introduces herself as Amy, shakes his hand firmly, offers him a slice of apple dipped in honey. He calculates the moon’s phases in his head and realises with a start that it is Rosh Hashanah, the start of a new lunar calendar.

The apple is crisp, the honey is sweet, and tonight, the Golem is quiet. It’s a promising way to ring in a new year.

Thor

_I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you _

Jane’s jaw drops when Thor introduces himself to her mother in flawless Classical Hebrew. His eyes twinkle as he explains that the Norsemen were not the first Midgardians he’d met, though they were admittedly the first who set him up as a god.

She thinks about Proto-Hebrew script and the way it resembles runes if you squint your eyes and look for it. She thinks about all of the instances of visitation, thinks about the angelic hierarchy. Her ancestor’s ancestors wrote about _Ishim_ and _Bene Elohim_, and maybe it’s the influence of the Western art world colouring her perception, but she wouldn’t scoff at someone who looked at Thor and saw an angel.

He weaves tales of wonder and adventure, his eyes lighting up when her mother brings out the _chanukkiah_. His voice rumbles as he describes the Battle of Elasa as can only one who was there to witness Judah fall.

He switches to Modern Hebrew, the Allspeak allowing for a flawless transition. He sounds like a sabra, like one of Jane’s cousins, his tongue relaxed and familiar, unlike her own stilted Talmud Torah dialect.

Thor does not come to Midgard expecting to be worshipped, and he is not surprised to learn that those who would once have called him a god are now fewer and fewer. He learns about those few who do still pay homage to Asgard, and asks Erik if a visit from an Asgardian is one they would welcome. Erik cautions him, recommends he have someone at SHIELD run interference for him. He learns about the number of organizations out there who claim a fealty to Odin but use it to mask a hatred of others and a belief in their own supremacy. It sickens him that the Allfather’s name would be so besmirched.

Jane takes him to her friend’s _aufruf_, and after raising multiple glasses to the happy couple, he leaves Jane to her socializing and returns to the sanctuary. It’s a beautiful room, reminding him muchly of his mother’s quarters with its stained glass windows and hanging flame lanterns. The leader of this community, Jane had introduced her as Rabbi Amy, is standing in front of the large ark at the front of the room, and he is silent, but she must sense him there because she invites him up to stand next to her.

He feels a presence, this close to the ark that holds the scrolls so sacred to Jane’s people. It’s less like his mother and more like standing in front of Odin while he sleeps. There is a power here that for all his millennia, he suspects still too young to understand. He asks the rabbi about it, and she tells him about the first ark, and the veil, and the danger of looking where you are told not to. He knows well the power of stories, of belief, but it surprises him that he should feel it, when he is not a believer. Rabbi Amy smiles at him and wryly points out that she never believed in Norse mythology, and yet here he is.

He laughs uproariously at that, it’s true enough what she says. He exists despite – and ofttimes in spite of – what people believe, and it is clear to him that the same must be said for the god-being of this people.

Bucky

אַן אַפּיקורס רופֿסטו מיך מיט שם־הוויה לעסטער איך

_You say I took the name in vain/I don't even know the name_

<strike>The Asset</strike> <strike>Yankele</strike> <strike>James Barnes</strike> Bucky has two notebooks. He pulls everything Hydra poured into him out, puts it in one notebook. GPS coordinates, dates and descriptions that he thinks might match assassinations.

The other notebook is his memory book. The handwriting is shaky sometimes, and the language changes from one word to the next. _Ich bin assez sur je __иудейский._ It will be useful for when he finds <strike>Menashe</strike>, <strike>hey let’s hear it for Captain America</strike>, Steve. He knew him, _he knows he knew him_.

They play cat-and-mouse for six months before he lets them find him. He returns to America in magnetic cuffs. His armplates shift and flex of their own volition but he makes no move to escape. He will be compliant.

It takes three months for the witch and the sorcerer to pull every last tendril of tentacle out of his brain. There are holes left behind that they cannot fill, but it’s mostly okay, because most days he thinks he’s happier not remembering.

Menashe – no, he’s Steve now – visits him every day. They mostly just sit and talk, Steve drawing sometimes. He draws a girl with curly brown hair and a broken tooth and says her name is Rivke. Bucky remembers a lisp, _vartn far mir Yankele_! he remembers arguing with her over who really found the _afikoymen_, who gets to bargain with papa for a prize.

A week before Passover, Steve persuades him to leave the tower. They drive down 2nd Ave to the Lower East Side, and Bucky’s mouth drops open when he sees where they are. He remembers when this place opened, selling candy out of giant barrels, and his mouth waters as Steve leads him further in, right to the back where they still have packets of candy cigarettes and lollipops the size of his fist.

They buy a 5-lb bag of fruit slices plus a civvie-sized box of them for the seder Steve’s going to in DC, hosted by his new friend Toby. Bucky isn’t allowed to leave New York yet, so he ushers in the holiday with a glass of sticky grape juice and The Prince of Egypt. He thinks it’s just about the best movie he’s ever seen, after Lilo & Stitch.

At the end of the week, Steve surprises him again. He’s brought SHIELD’s chaplain back with him from Washington, and between the team and a handful of SHIELD agents, they have a _minyan_ for _Yizkor_. The words bubble up out of him from a place he didn’t know they were hidden, and suddenly Bucky is 12 years old, being ushered out of the _shtiebel_ with the other kinderlach. The keening voice of his father drifts out to him and now he is back in the here and now and his own voice is soft as his murmurs the words, an echo through time.

Rabbi Altman – and a lady rabbi, ain’t that a kick, what would his pa say – is nice, she doesn’t stare at his arm or ask him stupid questions, like how’s it that a nice Jewish boy winds up the fist of a Nazi secret society. (The answer is brainwashing, which anyone with an up-to-date history book would know, but some news programs apparently don’t got the budget for that kinda research.)

The celebrate the end of Passover with pizza and beer, and Bucky’s pretty quiet, but it’s a happy kind of quiet. He’s still all turned around in his head some days, but it’s not all bad. He’s got his own little family, and they’re all broken in some way, but that don’t mean they ain’t good.


	2. Glossary and Explanations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish terms, as well as some information and a few links. It's broken down by character, same order as the story itself.

Steve

The Yiddish transliteration and translation for his line from Hallelujah:

_Ikh ze dayn shlos, ikh ze dayn fon/A harts iz nisht keyn meylekhs tron_ (I see your castle, see your flag, a heart is no king’s throne)

_Upsherin_

The upsherin is a haircutting ceremony done in a variety of Orthodox communities where a boy only receives his first haircut when he is three years old. It marks when the child is considered old enough to enter into formal education. The boy will be presented with a Hebrew alphabet that has honey on it, and he will lick the honey off as he reads the letters.

_Menashe/Joseph_

Menashe (or Manasses in English) is one of the sons of Joseph in Genesis. Canonically, Steve’s father is named Joseph. Sarah’s father tears at his shirtsleeve because he is mourning his daughter as dead to him for her marriage to a non-Jewish man and for naming her son after that man.

_Forverts_

Forverts/The Forward began life as a Yiddish-language daily newspaper. It’s still available as a monthly magazine in Yiddish, and they are now primarily an English language news site with a focus on the Jewish perspective.

_Alef-beis_

The Hebrew alphabet, named for the first two letters, much like the alphabet is so named.

_Pogroms_

Pogroms were riots aimed at persecuting communities of Jews in the Russian Empire. The word has since expanded to refer to other violent occurrences outside Eastern Europe, but the format was basically always the same – violence in the form of destruction of property, beatings, and murder.

_Kaddish_

The Kaddish is a prayer that focuses on the sanctification of G-d. There are different versions, but when people refer to it they usually mean the Mourner’s Kaddish, which is said in all prayer services and at funerals and memorials. It is traditionally said for immediate family members, but many communities will recite it together in honour of those who have no one to say it for them. Some customs also allow for a mourner to be chosen to represent others. For example, my great-aunt is not religious, so she asked my father to say it for my great-uncle after he passed.

_Sh’ma_

The sh’ma, or shema, is the most important prayer in Judaism. It states in full: _Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One_. It’s said in every prayer service and many Jews say it right before they go to sleep. It’s also a traditional form of last words, for those who are facing death.

_Yiddish Book Centre_

The [Yiddish Book Centre](https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/) is an amazing organization dedicated to the preservation of the Yiddish language. They help libraries and schools around the world maintain collections, they have thousands of titles digitized and available online, as well as recordings of Yiddish stories and poetry that were recorded by volunteers. They also have a collection of hundreds of memorial books, each one commemorating a Jewish community that was destroyed in the Holocaust.

_Toby_

Given that they’re in Washington, I gave in to a bit of self-indulgence and gave Toby Ziegler from The West Wing a cameo.

_Siddur Sim Shalom_

A siddur is a Jewish prayerbook. The Sim Shalom editions are those used by synagogues affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism movement.

_Mandelbrot_

It’s like biscotti, but made with more butter.

Tony

_Quota_

The quota was a system in place that limited admission of Jews to establishments – mostly schools. The admission standards were set higher for Jewish students (for example, McGill’s grade standard at that time for admission was 60%, but it was 75% for Jews.) to help the school narrow the field of applicants, and many famous Jews were rejected from their first choice due to quotas – Richard Feynman is a pretty well known one, a situation Columbia University probably really regrets now. In regard to country clubs, it was far more common that Jews simply weren't admitted at all, but I'm going with author's prerogative on this one.

_Pidyon Haben_

In some traditional Jewish communities, this is a ritual ceremony in which the first-born son is presented to the leader of the community and then symbolically purchased back by the father. It stems from rabbinical tradition in which the first-born was dedicated to G-d and took on priestly duties. It’s not super common due to a number of limitations – it doesn’t apply if the son is not the first-born child, if he was born via C-section, etc.

_Mel Brooks_

Mel Brooks is a writer and director of brilliantly funny movies that are Very Jewish in comedic scope. That being said, his films are absolutely accessible to all, and I highly recommend The Producers (1967 if you’re not into musicals, 2005 if you like musicals) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

_Doggy prayer shawls_

[An actual thing](https://www.amazon.com/Rubies-Yarmulke-Tallis-Dog-Costume/dp/B00WBBG2XK) you can buy. YMMV on whether it’s even remotely appropriate.

_Tallis_

Fringed shawl worn by religious Jews while praying. They come in two varieties, one is a smaller sort of scarf style, the other is a large block of fabric that falls nearly to your feet and is worn a bit like a cape. I have a lot of fond memories of being tucked into my father’s tallit as a child and it was incorporated into my wedding canopy when I got married.

_Uriel_

One of the archangels. His name translates to God is my Light.

Natasha

_Involuntary conscription_

Jewish boys were taken from their families at a very young age and forced to serve in the Imperial Army. They were forbidden from keeping Kosher, forcibly educated in the Orthodox Church doctrine, and not permitted to see their families. The apocrypha in my family is that my father’s great-grandfather trekked across Siberia to escape conscription. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a common enough story in Jewish families.

_Lekach_

Lekach is a honey cake traditionally eaten at Rosh Hashanah. It’s very dense and I don’t like it.

_Shtetl_

Shtetls were small towns with a mostly Jewish population in Eastern/Central Europe pre-WW2. Think Anatevka, from Fiddler on the Roof.

_S’chach_ (The “ch” is pronounced in the back of the throat)

Part of the rituals of the holiday of Sukkot/Sukkos is eating our meals outdoors in a temporary construction that resembles a wooden hut. The s’chach is the materials used as the roof – the roof must be at least party open to the sky, and made of things grown from the ground, so traditional materials are usually branches of trees. Sukkot is an autumn holiday, which is also a rainy season in many parts of the world. You can imagine how that goes.

_Havdalah_

The ritual ceremony that marks the end of the Sabbath and the beginning of the week.

Clint

_Hamin and the bread_

Hamin, more commonly known as cholent, is a stew that is simmered overnight to accommodate restrictions on cooking on the Sabbath. Malka is Sephardic, so her version would likely contain rice and beef, with eggplant and peppers, and seasoned with cumin, ginger, and hot pepper. The bread Clint eats is a [Sephardic challah](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017858-sephardic-challah-with-whole-spices), which is like regular challah but with added seasoning in the form of anise and caraway.

_Yonatan ben Avraham v’Sarah_

When someone completes their conversion process, they choose a Hebrew name. I think Clint would choose Yonatan (Hebrew form of Jonathan) in honour of the biblical character, who was known to be a skilled archer. Regardless of whether their parents are still alive, the Hebrew name ends with ben/bat (son/daughter) of Abraham and Sarah, the parents of all Jewry. When someone converts, we consider their previous lineage metaphysically nullified. They are Jewish and have always been Jewish. That being said, it does not supersede any familial relationship in a convert’s external life!

Bruce

_B’nai Brith_

B’nai Brith is a Jewish service organization that provides, among other things, summer camp programs for children.

_Hillel_

Hillel International is a Jewish campus organization that has a presence in many colleges and universities around the world, though primarily North America. They provide a safe place on campus for Jewish students, as well as hosting events like community dinners.

_Quotes about science and the Golem_

The quote about science comes from the Netiv HaTorah, which is the collected writings of the MaHaRaL, more commonly known as Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague. He was a leading rabbi of his day (late 16th ct) and he is considered one of the greatest rabbis of all time for his works on philosophy and mysticism. He is also the protagonist in the legend of the Golem of Prague. The quote about the Golem comes from the novel version of the story written by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

_Apples and honey_

Apples and honey are traditionally eaten at Rosh Hashanah to symbolize a hope for a sweet year ahead.

Thor

_Proto-Hebrew_

Proto Hebrew, or the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, is the script that was used in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. It’s a variant of Phoenician, and some of the letters look a bit like Futhark runes. Which isn’t too odd, as Futhark also stems from Phoenician, though it came much later. Perhaps Thor was inspired by the Hebrew and introduced it to the Scandinavians?

_Ishim/Bene Elohim_

The Ishim and Bene Elohim are two of the ranks of angels in Jewish angelic hierarchy. The Bene Elohim were the sons of Godly beings (ie demigods) and the Ishim were the class of angels considered to be closest to mortals.

_Chanukkiah_

A chanukkiah is the 9-branched candelabrum we use at Channukah. Also called a menorah, though that is a bit of a misnomer.

_Battle of Elasa_

The Battle of Elasa was one of the battles fought during the Maccabean Revolt which make up the Channukah story. It’s the one in which Judah Maccabee was killed.

_Sabra v Talmud Torah_

A sabra is a native of Israel. Talmud Torah is a Jewish day school. They can try to teach us Hebrew til the cows come home, we’re never gonna sound like sabras.

_Aufruf_

An aufruf (pronounced oof-roof) is a ceremony held at synagogue where the groom (or bride and groom both, depending on the denomination) is called up to the Torah. The family will usually sponsor a luncheon after, candy will be thrown, people will shout mazel tov, it’s all very festive.

Bucky

The Yiddish transliteration and translation for his line from Hallelujah:

_An apikoyres rufstu mikh/Mit shem-havaye lester ikh_ (you call me an apostate/I blaspheme with the Holy Name)

_Ich bin assez sur je иудейский_

I’m pretty sure I’m Jewish, in a jumble of German, French, and Russian.

_Rivke_

The Hebrew version of Rebecca. Rebecca Barnes is canonically Bucky’s younger sister.

_Vartn far mir, Yankele_

Yiddish for “wait for me, Yankele”. Yankele, or Yankel, is a Yiddish diminutive of Yakov (Jacob), which I've decided is Bucky's Hebrew name..

_Afikoymen/afikomen_

The afikomen is a piece of matzo that constitutes one of the stages of the Passover seder. It’s hidden by parents and children search for it, then hold out for some sort of promise (usually a sweet or toy) in exchange for it’s return.

_Jelly fruit slices_

Their origin is a bit muddled, but they are basically little half-moon shaped jelly candies that are like candied fruit, if candied fruit was made entirely of sugar and not at all of actual fruit. It’s become an extremely popular Passover candy due to its ingredients being Passover-friendly.

_Minyan_

A minyan is a quorum of 10 Jews. Certain prayers (like the Mourner’s Kaddish) can only be said when this quorum is present.

_Yizkor_

Yizkor is a set of remembrance prayers recited four times a year, one of them being the last day of Passover. They are only meant to be said by those who have lost a parent, so it is customary for those with both parents alive (and as such, children, generally speaking) to leave the room while it is being said. The main prayer is called El Malei Rachamim, and it asks G-d to remember and grant peace to the souls of the departed.

_Shtiebel_

A literal translation is “little house”, and shtiebels are traditionally like mini synagogues that are located in private homes or backrooms of businesses. In the early days of the diamond district in New York, there were shtiebels in the area so that businessmen could go to their daily prayers without having to leave the area. You still find them in a lot of communities with Hasidic groups who may not otherwise have a congregational presence. There is a local Chabad in my neighbourhood that holds their Sabbath services in the cafeteria of a municipal office building that is closed for business on the weekends.

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of these experiences are ones I've pulled from my own life and family history. As a result, they are largely Ashkenazi in origin. There's some Sephardic content, but not much, and I am sorry for that. 
> 
> A somewhat comprehensive glossary and some brief history lessons can be found in the second chapter. Please feel free to ask for any clarifications if something wasn't explained well enough!!
> 
> Please come flail with me about Jewish Avengers over at [tumblr](https://sarahcakes613.tumblr.com)!


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